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So I picked up the iPad a few days ago because we’re working on some updates that will convert our MilkPress Themes to an iPad friendly version, as well as convert the flash into all html. On top of that we’re going to build in some other cool features so we needed the iPad to make sure it worked. Love those “work purchases.” ;)

In playing around I’ve noticed some things that I wanted to share. First, I definitely think you should create a +Site JUST for the iPad. The reason being is that the images should have different resolutions so they don’t look like crud on the iPad. The resolution of the iPad is 1024 x 768. So on your header for your html site, it needs to be 1024px wide (but on the stage in Showit at it’s current size). Second reason is that you want to make those buttons bigger for fingers, and maybe introduce another swipe gallery from HTML (notice the pt 1 of ?…). This is all so new so we’re learning as we go.

Another big reason that you should create a +Site JUST for the iPad will be video. For the time being, if you want a quick way to get video playing on your iPad site you can copy and paste the embed codes from youtube into your “page html”. The iPad will automatically recognize that it’s a YouTube video and show the HTML5 version of the player. The neat thing about this is that it’s integrated with the look and feel of the iPads OS down to the button glow. The downside of course is the branding issue; it’s a YouTube video. We do imagine putting in an open sourced video player, but the ones that I’ve seen so far are….ehh. The one we’re interested in hasn’t been released yet. This is just the beginning though. If there’s a world of iPad users surfing the net with no where to go, you might as well embrace them and build a site just for them. All with Showit…..all included. How sick is that?!

For Android users I recommend you start building a flash website right now and tailor it to them (ours is in the works). Since flash has already landed on the Nexus One and is currently Droid bound let’s serve them a mobile flash website. The difference here is the scale, or size of the site. You want GINORMOUS buttons and text so that it appears, correctly to scale, on a device thats 320×480 in resolution. The videos you currently have in your Showit website will work just fine (and is ultimately the reason I think they don’t work right now within Showit mobile) because they are already flash.

Anyhow there’s still a ton of work and research to be done but I wanted to post this up so you guys can know what we know. Have a super safe and fun Memorial Day weekend!

Want to integrate Facebook even further into your Showit website?  Here we’ll explain how to add the “like” button, or a “like box” (previously known as fan page badge). Now keep in mind that the chances of Showit building these in are pretty high so don’t be surprised if this method is rendered obsolete at any time (at which point this post will be updated). The great thing about this method is that it can be done regardless if your hosting with Showit or not, and can be added to any +Site that you have published. All we’re doing is adding a piece of Javascript to the Custom HTML section of your Showit website (advanced section).

Add “like button” to Showit website.

1. Open Showit. Go to Site—->Settings—–>Advanced. Tick the box next to “Custom Header HTML.” Paste the following code in it’s entirety into the space provided. This will put a “like” button in the upper left hand corner of your website.  Towards the end of the code string you’ll see left:2px; top:2px; The px is the number of pixels from the edge of the screen. Chance left to right, and top to bottom to move it to the bottom-right of the screen.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
document.write(‘<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fspilledmilkdesigns.com&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=70&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” width=”70″ height=”26″ frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”false” style=”background:transparent; border:none; overflow:hidden; width:70; height:26px; position:fixed; padding:2px; left:2px; top:2px;”></iframe>’);
</script>
<meta content=”Spilled Milk’s Website” property=”og:title”><meta property=”og:title” content=”Spilled Milk’s Website”/>
<meta property=”og:site_name” content=”SpilledMilkDesigns.com”/>
<meta property=”og:image” content=”http://www.spilledmilkdesigns.com/images/smd_50x50.png”/>

2. There are a few things you’ll need to change in the code above before you publish. First, change the URL spilledmilkdesigns.com to your own. The title, site_name, and image location all need to be changed as well. Those correspond to what you’ll see come across facebook after someone “likes” your site. Read more here.

3. After changing the information publish your site. If your hosting your own site you’ll need to go back and re-upload the index.html page.

4. There is one more thing you can add to the like button. Supposedly you can add another meta property tag called fb: admins, followed by your user ID. This then pops up the word “admin” magically next to your like button. Clicking on that takes you to a special Facebook setup with your og: image used as the profile image. You can then blast off a status update to the walls of the people who have liked your site. Pretty neat right? It would be cool if it worked though. We spent a good while messing with it to no avail.

Add “like box” to Showit website.


Todd from Showit gets most of the credit on this one. The problem with the facebook fan page badge was that there was no way to “hide” it, meaning it would always be visible. In 5 seconds (I’m pretty sure it was 4 seconds) he wrote out a piece of code that will automatically close the “like box.” Now this is very much a page hack so we take no responsibilities if you break your site. With that to say, I’ll mention again the likelihood of Showit releasing these features into the builder, rendering these methods obsolete. Proceed at your own risk (although if you follow the instructions it’s as easy as copy and paste).

1. Find your fan page id. To find this click on your fan page profile image, then look up in the URL for a set of numbers at the end of the address. Take note of that string of numbers, you’ll need it in the next step.

2. Open Showit. Go to Site—->Settings—–>Advanced. Tick the box next to “Custom Header HTML.” Paste the following code in it’s entirety into the space provided. This will put a like box in the lower right -hand corner of your website.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
function closeFB(){$(“#fbclosebtn”).hide();$(“#fbframe”).hide(300);}
function openFB(){$(“#fbframe”).show(300, function(){$(“#fbclosebtn”).show();});}
document.write(‘<iframe id=”fbframe” src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?id=137013621744&amp;width=292&amp;height=425&amp;stream=true&amp;header=false” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”false” style=”background:#ffffff; border:none; overflow:hidden; width:292px; height:425px; position:fixed; padding:2px; z-index:2000000001; right:0px; bottom:0px;”></iframe><div id=”fbclosebtn” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:20px; height:20px; position:fixed; padding:2px; z-index:2000000002; right:0px; bottom:395px;”><a style=”color:#888; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold” href=”javascript:closeFB();”>X</a></div><div id=”fbopenbtn” style=”background:#ffffff; border:none; overflow:hidden; width:98px; height:30px; position:fixed; padding:2px; z-index:2000000000; right:0px; bottom:0px;”><a style=”color:#000000; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold” href=”javascript:openFB();”><img src=”http://sites.showitfast.com/10803/715/fb_likebox.jpg” border=”0″/></a></div>’);
</script>

3. In the 4th line of that code, where it says /likebox.php?id=137013621744 …the number needs to be changed to your fan page id that you grabbed from the 1st step.  Also, the last line of code…where it says img src=….that URL needs to be YOUR url to the fb_likebox.jpg image. Feel free to go the url http://sites.showitfast.com/10803/715/fb_likebox.jpg , save the image, upload into your Showit account, then replace the link in the very end of the code above.

4. Publish your site, and remember if your hosting on your own you’ll need to re-upload that index.html page. The like box is placed at the lower right but if you know HTML the box can be moved anywhere on the screen.

5. Visit our website for the likebox example. While you’re there it wouldn’t hurt to join our fan by clicking “like.”

Any questions sound off in the comments.

Tweak your Tweets!

Showit provides a Twitter widget to display tweets.  The good thing is that it’s quick and fits most designs; the bad thing is that it’s not able to be used in some designs. There IS a bit of a workaround that will give you a little bit more control, and may allow you to achieve the look you we’re initially going for.

Open Showit, and add the Feed Reader Widget to the stage.  Next, visit your Twitter profile while logged out. Look to the very bottom, of the right sidebar, and you’ll find the RSS icon to subscribe to the timeline feed. Copy this link, and paste it into  the “Feed URL” section. That’s it! It will only display a minimum of three posts, but you can shrink the widget down in the advanced panel (canvas size), and get rid of the scroll bar to make it look like it only has one tweet. Finally, style and tweak your tweets!

*Edit* – This method is obsolete. Showit pushed out an update that will do this for you automatically. Click here for more information.

fbembed_1http://www.facebook.com/pages/Houston-TX/Spilled-Milk-Designs/137013621744?v=app_4949752878

Facebook won’t allow you to embed your Showit site the normal way using the embed code.  We have to use Facebooks own coding language dubbed Facebook Markup Language or FBML. Luckily we’ve figured it all out for you and will explain how to embed your Showit site into your Facebook page.

*The particular Facebook app FBML mentioned in this post only works with Facebook Fan pages. Use the Facebook application My HTML for personal profiles.*

We’re going to assume that you already have the embed code provided to you by Showit, and we’re going to assume that you want to embed your entire site. The sizing inside the code doesn’t matter so don’t worry about it. If you have music on your site, you may want to duplicate the style group and embed one without music as to not surprise your visitor. Facebook doesn’t have ANY audio coming from it so it would be a shocker. :) Your code will look very similar to this one below:

<object width="800" height="540"><param name="movie" value="http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="FlashVars" VALUE="sid=10803/715&sp=home-1&fw=800&fh=541&it=0&ip=1&pc=00000d&sc=00000d&cmp=1"></param><embed src="http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf" FlashVars="sid=10803/715&sp=home-1&fw=800&fh=541&it=0&ip=1&pc=00000d&sc=00000d&bc=d4d4d4&cmp=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="800" height="540"></embed></object>

There is only one line of code that you need; the site ID line which is in red above. This is different for everyone so please use yours unless you want to promote our site, in which case we are fine with that as well. :)

You’ll need to change the “800″ and “541″ to “760″ and “513″ in the code marked in red above. 760px is the maximum width of the canvas space on Facebook.

With your line of code handy, open up Facebook and find the place to browse for more applications. Search for FBML, and add it to your fan page. Next, go to the profile view of your Facebook page, and click the “edit page” link. Scroll all the way down until you see the Website-FBML application, and click on “edit.”

Rename the Box Title to Website or whatever you’d like, then copy and paste the following code into the FBML box:

<fb:swf swfbgcolor="000000" imgstyle="border-width:3px; border-color:black;"
swfsrc='http://sites.showitfast.com/pl/site.swf?PLACE SITE ID HERE' imgsrc='IMAGE URL'
width='760' height='513' />

Where it says, “PLACE SITE ID HERE“, you’re going to paste the site ID line from above that you took from your embed code from Showit.  Make sure there is no space between the ? and the start of the site ID code.

You’ll need to give your visitors something to click to activate the canvas space. We’re not sure why this is, but hey it works. Take a screen snip of your site, and re-size it to 760×513. Upload it into Showit and grab the link to the asset. If you don’t know what that is then upload to Flickr or somewhere else. You just need somewhere to host the image. Replace the “IMAGE URL” with the URL to your loading image, then click on “save changes.”

Next, go to the profile view of your Facebook page, and click the “edit page” link. Scroll all the way down until you see the Website-FBML application, and click on “application settings.” It should be set to Box: Available | Tab: Added.

Good luck and if you run into any glitches just ask for help in the comments section. If it doesn’t work you did something wrong. :) If you like these little hacks then let us know!

*Updated*
Screencast tutorial here

Showit sites are fast

Google is most likely going to change their search algorithm to account for site loading times. In laments terms, if your site loads slowly then you will not rank well. Are you ready for that?  Want to find out if your site is loading slowly as compared to other sites?  Measure your site speed with Google Webmasters Site Performance Tool. This can be found in your Google Webmasters account (which you should be using for your Showit site anyway), under the “Labs” section and is listed as “Site Performance.” If you don’t already use Firebug then don’t worry about installing the plugin. That’s mainly for development and debugging purposes.

If you don’t have any data yet, don’t fret. Your site may have not been up for long enough to collect data. Also, don’t worry if it says your “average load time” is more than a few seconds. That is average, and is accumulative. What we’re looking at is the example load time from the / URL which is the first page of your site. It should be under 1 second. If it’s not then you may want to re-think what you have loading right off the bat.

Here is a screenshot from our site. It says our average loading time is 2.5 seconds, but that our site loads in 0.8 seconds. That is FAST for a flash site. It’s also interesting to check out our other sites, for example learnshowit.com has an average loading time of 0.8 seconds, which is faster than 93%of all sites. Pretty impressive for a Showit site. These figures also DO NOT account for the Rapid Hosting that Showit just released yesterday. With Rapid Hosting, there is no wait for your Showit site to load, as long as you don’t bog it down with 50mb videos, 5mb photos, and 8mb mp3s. Compress that junk down and save your visitors some time, and their sanity. We’re going to keep an eye on this as we just setup our site for Rapid Hosting. We’ll post back our findings after a few months of collecting more data.

speed

*Update – Well that didn’t take long. After the above tests we’re run we flipped the switch to rapid edge hosting. Once that happened our load time was cut in half! Our Showit site now loads in 0.3 seconds, which is faster than 98% of all sites measured. See for yourself.

faster